Women have made great strides since bobsled became an Olympic sport in 2002, but there’s still one barrier left to scale — getting women into the four-man event.

Olympic gold medallist Kaillie Humphries says women bobsledders' skill levels are now high enough that they should be allowed to race in four-man events.
“That will be something I’ll push — after Sochi,” she says.

By:Kerry GillespieSports Reporter, Published on Fri Nov 09 2012

Ever since some enterprising soul put a steering mechanism on a toboggan in the late 1800s, men have happily hurtled themselves down icy chutes in bobsleds.

They started doing it just for the thrill of it, then came the competitions to test themselves against others and, starting in 1924, there were Olympic medals to win.

Women, as in most sports, have had to fight gender stereotypes and sports bureaucracy to get the right to do the very same things.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that women’s bobsled teams started flourishing. They raced for Olympic medals for the first time at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

They still haven’t achieved parity, though. Women only compete as a team of two, not in the faster four-man event. And, since its inception in 2000, women who win the world championships do not have their names engraved on a perpetual Stanley Cup-style trophy and get to hoist it above their heads in triumph, as the men do. They’ve simply never had one.

But that is set to change this year, thanks to a Canadian dad who just couldn’t stand the unfairness of it all. Ray Simundson’s daughter is 2010 Olympic gold medallist bobsled pilot Kaillie Humphries.

“If they’ve got something for the men, why not for the women?” asks Simundson, who has spent three years trying to get bobsled’s international governing body, FIBT, to present a women’s challenge trophy similar to what the men have. “I get a lot of attaboys and pats on the back, lovely idea, boy that would be awesome,” he says. “But then when it comes down to actually making it happen, I get shot down every time.”

After watching his daughter, and then-brakeman Jennifer Ciochetti, win the 2012 world championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., he decided he was done talking and was simply going to act. “I’m getting a trophy, I’m going to have it engraved with all the winners and I’m going to present it.”

Much as women sliders must have liked his refusal to take no for an answer, it turns out that Simundson’s emails, calls and cornering the FIBT president himself at races, appear to have worked better than he thought they had.

When the Star contacted the international federation this week, we were informed that a women’s challenge cup, to be called the President’s Trophy, is finally in the works.

The federation “appreciated very much” Simundson’s offers to donate a trophy but it won’t be necessary, says Heike Groesswang, FIBT secretary general. “The FIBT with its president Ivo Ferriani decided to have such a challenge trophy that will be handed over from one season to the other to the world champion, starting this year.”

She could offer no explanation on why it has taken so long to give women a permanent trophy but it’s obvious to Don Wilson, chief executive of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton. The Canadian organization petitioned FIBT twice on behalf of Simundson but things just take time in a “male-dominated” sport, he says.

It wasn’t that long ago — in the late ’90s — that women competing in World Cup bobsled races in Europe were being given sausages and laundry detergent as first-place awards.

“That’s what girls used to get for prizes,” Humphries says. “Congratulations, here’s a box of Tide.”

“When I first started back in 2003, women weren’t even allowed to compete on all the tracks around the world,” she says.

They also weren’t allowed in the official start houses at St. Moritz, Switzerland, the birthplace of bobsled. Humphries still vividly recalls freezing in the tents the women were consigned to get ready in. That didn’t change, she says, until 2006.

The household-goods prizes are gone; women are allowed on all the tracks and in the start houses; and, thanks to a father who pushed the international federation to fix an inequity, whoever wins this season’s world championships will finally get to have their big trophy moment and know their place in history will be engraved.

But, there’s still one barrier left to scale and that’s something Humphries says she has her eye on: Getting women into the four-man event.

Last month, she piloted her first four-man sled at the Olympic Park track in Calgary.

“It was so fun,” says Humphries, who was one big grin recalling that run weeks later. “It’s not something we’re allowed to do. It’s not a sanctioned event.”

There’s enough skill and experience in the women’s field now, she says, that it’s time to change that. “That will be something I’ll push — after Sochi.”

For now, Humphries has her sights firmly planted on two nearer-term goals: Defending her world championship title in St. Moritz in February and her gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The road to all those goals starts Friday in Lake Placid, when she and teammate Chelsea Valios slide in the first World Cup of the season.

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